Polonium-210 Available Through Mail Order

Knutsi writes "InformationWeek is reporting that Polonium 210, the radioactive material used to poison former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is not as hard to get your hands on as some have previously stated. American family business United Nuclear is actually selling the stuff, and other equally exotic materials, on their company website. Could come in handy for the xmas shopping season."

Comments

Re:wow, and run by a loon too

[Anonymous Coward]

United Nuclear is run by Bob Lazar, who some 20 years ago claimed to have worked on alien spaceships on a secret military base in Nevada

Loon would be the polite phrase here on plant zogarth.

That amount isn't hazardous

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount they sell, 0.1 microcuries, is... well, a tiny amount. Seriously, if you ordered 100 vials and gave the full 10 microcuries of it to someone, the radiation from it isn't going to come close to killing them.

On the other hand, I'm not sure of the biochemical effects of Polonium on the system. Often times these heavy elements have worse biological properties from their chemical interactions than from the radiation they emit. It might well be that it will be chemically toxic to you long before radiation becomes a worry.

Re:That amount isn't hazardous

[paeanblack]

Often times these heavy elements have worse biological properties from their chemical interactions than from the radiation they emit. It might well be that it will be chemically toxic to you long before radiation becomes a worry.

In most cases it's a combination of the two...the chemical properties will ferry the isotope to a sensitive location where the radiation can wreak havoc.

For example, a weak alpha emitter can be held in the palm of your hand without any effects. An element that acts as a drop-in calcium replacement in the body can benignly sit in your bones. Combine both properties, and you'll have irradiated bone marrow and a world of hurt.

antistatic brushes

[chroma]

Theorore Gray (of wooden periodic table fame) also says that Polonium 210 is used in antistatic brushes for film negatives

Re:antistatic brushes

[mmontour]

Yes, available here for example. The 3" model ($47.84) has 500 uCi of polonium-210.

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium

"The maximum allowable body burden for ingested polonium is only 1,100 becquerels (0.03 microcurie), which is equivalent to a particle weighing only 6.8 × 10-12 gram. Weight for weight, polonium is approximately 2.5 × 1011 (250 billion) times as toxic as hydrogen cyanide. The maximum permissible concentration for airborne soluble polonium compounds is about 7,500 Bq/m3 (2 × 10-11 Ci/cm3). The biological halflife of polonium in humans is 30 to 50 days.[18]"

The toxic dose is 0.03 micro-curies

http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm

Lists their polonium source as 0.1 micro-curie. Now Polonium is only REALLY toxic when inhaled, where alpha particles do the most damage.

I know they probably track source sales like mad, but yeah, that seems a bit too convenient. I don't know what the disks are made off. If they are, say, ceramic based, it's probably resistant to most methods of extraction. Anything else, well...

I don't know how much longer then that this will be a 'legal' alpha source.

Re:Wow...

[b0s0z0ku]

The toxic dose is 0.03 micro-curies

No it isn't. That's the standard set by OSHA which is several orders of magnitude below the toxic dose in order to prevent health effects in people working with the stuff.

-b.

Re:Moo

[3770]

I did buy magnets from there. They are freakin' awesome.

I accidentally held them too close to each other with nothing in between and they slammed together with such a force that they made sparks and got chipped. I couldn't for the life of me get the magnets apart again until I realized that I could set one on the edge of a table and put my weight on the other to slide them apart but it still hurt my hands to do that.

The strength will amaze you and I only bought the 1" cube magnets. I can't even begin to imagine the strength of the really big ones.

Re:Moo

[Dachannien]

Among the most dangerous things you can give your small child are magnets - particularly the small pea-sized sort that are used in toys that are moved around on a platform by other magnets placed underneath.

If a child swallows more than one of these magnets, they can find each other through bowel tissue and clamp together, eventually killing the tissue that ends up between them due to lack of blood flow and possibly perforating the bowel.

The magnets they are talking about can break bones if you don't handle them correctly, and if you've ever handled smaller magnets before (who hasn't), you know that it can be tricky trying to arrange more than one magnet (even small ones) without allowing them to collide. You could probably also kill yourself with these magnets in freak circumstances.

Re:Polonium and Smoking

[selex]

Oh come on, why don't you people stomp my only joy in life some more. It causes cancer, it smells, it yellows your teeth, it stunts your growth, it makes you sterile, it slaughters small puppies with a chainsaw...and now its radioactive. Son of a bitch! I'm about to start smoking crack...seems less harmful.

Selex

Does the United Nuclear's webpage sell that too?

a great Wired article on United Nuclear

[pepax]

Check this out: http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.htm l

hilarious Independent editorial by Mark Steel

[toby]

here but pasted in full, in case it "disappears":

Polonium 210 was cancelled due to signal failure

If this was carried out by a state department, Putin will announce it's to be privatised

Published: 29 November 2006

They must be bemused in Chechnya. Because they had about 50,000 people blown up by Putin and no one gave a toss. They probably made countless attempts to interest politicians and reporters from the West, who said: "Hmm, you've had your hospital destroyed by a tank, have you? Well it's a bit 1940s I'm afraid. Have they killed any of you with rocket-propelled bird flu or a remote-controlled piranha - something a bit sexy?"

While Putin's army was destroying Chechnya, Tony Blair welcomed him to Britain, and described him as a "great moderniser". And that certainly applies to whoever killed Mr Litvinenko. Because there can hardly be a more modern way of murdering someone than with radioactive sushi. In many ways the two men are so similar that when Putin makes a statement on the incident, he might say: "This is not a betrayal of KGB values. It represents traditional assassination in a modern setting."

And if this was carried out by a state-run department, Putin will announce it's to be privatised so it can bid for outside contracts. By now they've probably already made a showreel to publicise their work called "Ready Steady Poison", in which a Russian version of Ainsley Harriott chortles: "Now you only need to add a pinch of this stuff. Too much is a waste. Not only that but it's a bit heavy on the palate, and just because you're killing someone, you don't want to drown out the subtle flavours of the salmon."

Most commentators have suggested the killing couldn't be linked to the hierarchy of the Russian government because it's too clumsy and risky. But this is to underestimate government agents. The CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro included placing a bomb inside an attractive sea-shell, in an area of the beach that he strolled on, in the hope it would catch his eye and he'd pick it up. So by comparison this effort was dry and straightforward. Maybe the world's older secret service agents meet up in gloomy pubs to drink bitter and complain: "Youngsters today have it easy. In the old days, if you wanted to murder someone with sea-food you were up all night making an exploding whelk."

But this case represents more than one murder, because it's forced much of the British establishment to acknowledge that Russia has gone wrong. This leaves them in some turmoil, because when the Soviet Union collapsed this wasn't just seen as the demise of a tyranny, but the ultimate triumph for capitalism. Big business had won so freedom and prosperity would surely follow. Businessmen scrambled for their piece of this private wealth, and this was celebrated as an example of the new liberty. George Soros, the West's most quoted financier of the time, wrote: "It's robber capitalism, it's lawless, but it's very vital and viable."

One flaw in this logic was that most of the newly rich Russian businessmen had previously held senior posts in the Communist Party, which is how they got access to this new treasure. Which means the attitude of the country's new owners was: "Under the old system I believed it was my right to be pampered in luxury, while most people were poor under communism. But now I realise it's actually my right to be pampered in luxury, while most people are poor under capitalism. Truly we should be grateful for this historic change."

If you pointed this out at the time, you were scowled at like someone who suggests the week before a World Cup that England aren't going to win. Now, 15 years later the place is in chaos, to the extent that life expectancy for men has fallen from 65 to 59. Which must be another sign of the new freedom, because in the old days people were forced to endure six extra years of turgid communism, but in the f

More scary then cyanide

[muridae]

United Nuclear sells 0.1 microcuries. Polonium 210 emits 4500 curies per gram [1], so that is about .0002 grams per curie. So they are selling 0.00002 micrograms, 0.02 picograms, or if you want to make it look really big, 22 femtograms [2]. How toxic is that? Well, I would suspect there is several times more cyanide in a single apple seed [3]. And wouldn't it be cheaper to get the Polonium from a photography shop, and not a monitored source of radio isotopes? [1]According to http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/polonium.pdf [2]2's are repeating. [3]Strangely, I could not find anything on the internet about how much toxin there really is in apple seeds. Polonium that needs a breader reactor to create, sure, but the poisonous apples at the farmers market, no one is talking about them!

Bob Lazar is an alien

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar :)

Magnetic hazards

[Animats]

Modern magnets are so powerful there are real hazards. When magnets were iron or, at the high end, AlNiCo, they couldn't retain a strong enough field to make much trouble, so people thought of magnets as safe. Neodymium magnets, though, can be made strong enough to be dangerous. The Magnetix building set killed several kids when magnets came loose from the plastic parts and were ingested. The CPSC had to order a recall.

Re:Brighter Teeth, For a Price

[LurkerXXX]

They're selling 0.1uCi for $69, which is 3x the 0.03uCi lethal dose.

Umm, NO. 0.03uCi is not a lethal dose. Perhaps you are misreading that crap on wikipedia?

"maximum allowable body burden" is NOT the same thing as "Lethal dose".

The government regulates the maximum allowable yearly exposure of workers who handle radiation (I'm one), and the maximum allowable exposure is far far below the lethal dose.

0.03uCi is NOT a lethal dose of Polonium-210

Are we really discussing the operational details of poisoning 10-100% of Chicago?

I don't know what you are talking about, but I'm talking about how the poisoning of one spy is being overyhyped by people like you into 'terrorists can buy enough radioactive material from illegitimate companies on the internet to poison everyone in Chicago!'.

No. They can't. Simple enough.

Re:Brighter Teeth, For a Price

[gnasher719]

'' UN sells in .1uCi amount, and according to our beloved Wikipedia, the lethal dose for INGESTED is .03uCi (assuming that 3 people in Chicago mistake Osama's gift cards for deep dish pizza and he has a very very fine razor blade to cut the sample into three parts). ''

No, 0.03 microcurie is _not_ the lethal dosis. 0.03 microcuries is the maximum that you are _allowed_ to swallow without the company you work at getting into trouble if it is found inside you.

Let's say you work at a company manufacturing rat poison. Obviously, some amount of rat poisin could enter your body. Tiny amounts _will_ enter your body. Health and safety authorities will have set a limit of how much rat poison is allowed to be in the body of the workers, without negative consequences to the company. That amount will be far, far, far away from a lethal dosis. It will be the maximum amount that doesn't affect you, not the smallest amount that kills you.

Quantity matters

[Anonymous Coward]

This notice is now on United Nuclear's isotopes webpage:

A SPECIAL NOTICE ABOUT POLONIUM-210

With the recent news of Polonium-210 being used as a poison, so much incorrect information has been passed around about the material that it's important to get the facts correct. The general public is quite ignorant when it comes to knowledge about radioactive materials and radiation in general.

The amount of Plonium-210, and all the isotopes we sell is an 'exempt quantity' amount. These quantities of radioactive material are not hazardous - this is why they are permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to be sold to the general public without any sort of license.
Although we do sell these isotopes, we do not actually stock them. All isotopes are made to order at an NRC licensed reactor in Oak Ridge Tennessee. When the isotope is made, it is shipped directly to the customer from the reactor to insure the longest possible half-life.

The exempt quantity of Polonium-210, or any of the radioactive isotopes sold by us or any scientific equipment supplier, is invisible to the human eye.
  In the case of needle sources, the radioactive material is electroplated on the inside of the eye of a needle.

You would need about 15,000 of our Polonium-210 needle sources
at a total cost of about $1 million - to have a toxic amount.

In comparison, Amercium-241 is a similar toxic Alpha radiation emitter and instead of a half life of 138 days like Polonium-210 has, it has a half life of over 450 years. It is far more toxic - and there is 10 times more the 'exempt quantity' amount in a typical smoke detector.

If you really wanted tom poison someone, you would of course have to come up with a way to remove the invisible amount of material from the source - which is just about physically impossible. In addition, there are dozens of other more toxic materials, like Ricin and Abrin, which can easily be made using plant material, and are also undetectable as a poison.
Although it obviously works, Polonium-210 is a poor choice for a poison.
In addition - an order for 15,000 sources would look a little suspicious, considering we sell about 1 or 2 every 3 months.

Re:Polonium and Smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

Aplha particles are the equivalent of Hummers crashing into your matter. They may not get far through the foyer, but they're going to leave a lot of damage. Gamma radiation is more of a sniper rifle. If it hits the right place, it's bad, and it can go through stuff, but it's not going to cause the same kind of damage the Hummer will.

Re:A Lump of Polonium 210...

[ptr2004]

There is already clarification on how they sell Polonium 20

http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm

Re:Feh

[droopycom]

No!!! Go read their website before talking:

Each order is custom made to a LICENSED reactor, and shipped directly form the licensed reactor to the final customer.
You would need to order 15000 of there samples, and spend 1 Million dollars in order to get a toxic amount.
Then you would have to somehow manipulate the isotopes to put them in a form convenient for poisoning.

Re:Not anymore

[rossifer]

This company imports it from Russia

You're talking out of your ass again. The radiation sources sold by this company come from Oak Ridge, Tennessee where they are made to order in an NRC licensed reactor and shipped directly to the customer.

You should educate yourself before you speak again on this subject.

Ross

Re:Remember your Paracelsus:

[Venner]

Oh yes. It's astonishing how much higher the levels of dangerous nuclide being belched out of coal plants are than are detectable around nuclear plants, for example.

Radon, as a heavier-than-air gas, obviously sinks. A person living in a basement apartment might have 1000% greater yearly environmental radiation exposure than someone living in a high-rise.
And I'm sure flight attendants who routinely work the long trans-Atlantic routes get hit with a lot from space. Etc.

Re:Loose lips sink ships

[JoshJ]

Actually, that gets you Hydrazine- details on the process here.
This is mustard gas. Not the same. Mod parent down.

Re:A Lump of Polonium 210...

[iMMersE]

Do you read TFA? You would need about 15,000 of our Polonium-210 needle sources
at a total cost of about $1 million - to have a toxic amount.